The story behind ten degrees warmer

by Robb

Once upon a time, in the magical kingdom of California, lived a little dude. He grew up basking in the warmth and goodness of perpetual sunshine, and all was good with the world.

When the little dude was in Kindergarten, his family moved to a strange new place called Eastern Washington. Here it was dry and hot in the summertime, and he could play in the sagebrush and sand dunes to his hearts content. In the winter, however, things changed. The wind turned cold, and the lovely warm autumn rain turned into a detestable thing called snow. Still being small and malleable, the little dude took the snow in stride, and certainly enjoyed it when school would be cancelled. But where his friends would enjoy going out and building snow forts, he much preferred to stay indoors in the wintery months. Preferably under a blanket. And near a fire.

After grade school, the little dude moved back to California, and once again life was good. When he got a little older, by a strange turn of events he moved to Singapore, and there he found out what real heat and humidity is like. Though the first week was a shock, he quickly realized he felt at home in the heat. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the cold wasn’t just annoying, but it actually HURT. Even in moderately cool temperatures his fingers would turn blue and his feet would ache. But even if it was so hot that the dude was sweaty and listless, even when it was stuffy and humid and miserable, he recognized that though he might be uncomfortable, unlike the cold, the heat never caused actual pain. Our hero was definitely a creature of the sun.

Now, I don’t want you to have a heart attack from the surprise, but that dude is, actually, me. I know, I know, I can be pretty subtle sometimes.

Here are a few other fun facts about me:

• Carrying a gallon of milk through the Safeway to the check out is torture to me, as if a bazillion knives are simultaneously stabbing my poor, poor fingers.
• I run through the Costco walk-in refrigerator the same way most people walk through a cloud of tear gas: as quickly as possible under pain of death.
• I’ve been snow skiing exactly one time, when I was about 14, and pretty much the entire time I thought I was going to die.
• A co-worker recently posted a quote by Mark Twain on the refrigerator. “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.” Sorry Mark, but I have to disagree.
• People who do those polar bear swims in icy water are clearly insane. There is no plausible alternative theory.

David and I were lucky enough to visit an active volcano in Guatemala called Pacaya. In the photos, I’m standing as close as I can get to the slow, molten magma – there is a reason we refer to it as hot lava – with a big smile on my face. David, who is pretty tolerant of the heat himself, is doing his best to smile for the camera but even from farther away is totally overwhelmed and clearly wants nothing more than to get away from the heat. Rock melts into lava at something like 1800 degrees, and five feet away I was doing just fine. If I lived in Westeros, I’d totally be House Targaryen.

The moral of the story? No matter what the weather is, this child of the sun is gonna be happier once it gets ten degrees warmer.